Tuesday, 23 April 2013

In a male dominated industry like the Nigerian music industry, first
runner-up at the Idol West Africa, Omawumi Megbele, has proven to be a
force to be reckoned with.

Some music critics in Nigeria have likened her to the legendary Onyeka Onwenu, who the singer did a duet with recently.

When
it comes to dressing, Omawumi mostly rocks short gown which barely
covers the whole of her thighs and at some instances, the shoulder
region of her body is always exposed. This sometimes revealed her tìts.
While some believe she does that intentional to stir controversies,
others believe Omawumi is only proud being a woman, which she attests to
in a recent interview.

Answering a question on why her tìts
popped out at an event, the Delta State-born singer revealed that,
“because I have small shoulders and my tìts are actually beautiful, I
tend to wear revealing upper body dresses.”

She added that, “when
you are looking at the mirror, you are not well as tall as to see how
troublesome it could be. That dress has feathers in the front of it and
before I left my hotel room, I asked someone if the dress was okay and
she said yes.”

Continuing, Omawumi stressed that, “so, I wore the
dress to the show and when I was performing at the show, of course,
paparazzi took my pictures and released them. I realized that my tìts
were practically pouring out of my dress, there was no way I could have
put my tìts back.”

AS part of measures to ensure food security for its teeming
population in the megacity, the Lagos State government has threatened to
henceforth, revoke all land allocated for agricultural use but
abandoned or converted to other uses.
According to the state government such land taken over will be handed
over to those who are ready to use them for agricultural purpose.

Cassava farm

Commissioner for Agriculture and Cooperatives, Prince Gbolahan Lawal,
who frowned at the practice said no allocated land should be left
fallow as the state has limited land with more people still expressing
interest in allocation.

“Government will not allow any land allocated for agriculture purpose
to be used for any other business. The allottees should take possession
of their land for farming purposes immediately.”, Lawal directed.

Fish farm at Ikorodu
According to him, “The 400-plot Ketu Ereyun fish farm estate to produce
about 10,000 tonnes of fish per annum at full capacity has been laid out
and allocation made to the first 162 investors. Based on the experience
at Ikorodu fish farm where land speculators were observed, the allotees
were given only six months to mobilize to site of lose allocation.”

He added that government would provide the necessary support services
needed, such as giving them institutional supports, exposing them to
credit facility and latest technology in the agricultural sector and
capacity building in the agric business.

Lawal, said government had set standard at all the farm estates, by
providing infrastructure, access to inputs, marketing strategy and
extension services to make production easy and convenient for allottee.

He said the AGRIC–YES programme in Abia, Badagry is fashioned after
the project Songhai in Benin Republic and replicated in other states in
the country, assuring that an average of 1000 youth will be trained by
the programme per annum.

The National Integrated Power Project, NIPP, of the Niger Delta Power
Holding Company (NDPHC) is expected to contribute up to 4,200 megawatts
to the 9,000MW, which would be available to Nigerians by December.

Speaking at the weekend, during the commissioning of distribution
centres in some parts of Lagos, the Managing Director of NDPHC, Mr.
James Olotu said, “By December, out of the expected 9,000MW which will
be available, NIPP will be contributing about 4,200MW of that or 50
percent of the entire capacity of power available in Nigeria in
December.”

Speaking further, Olotu said NDPHC would continuously work to meet
the expectations of Nigerians to have uninterrupted power supply in no
distant time. “We cannot rest on our oars. The reason is that we have
gaps that have been created over the years. The gaps have been so wide
and we are just playing catch up.

“We need to catch up quickly and begin to expand. Look at South
Africa, it has about 48,000 megawatts. Their population is about 38
million. The country also has about 8,000 megawatts in reserve. Here in
Nigeria, we don’t have up to what South Africa has in their reserve and
they are continuously building capacity,” he said.

The recent dip in power supply, Olotu said was as a result of
shortage of supply as gas producers had to shut down to maintain their
facilities.

He, however noted that it wouldn’t be a problem anymore as the
contractors handling the gas infrastructure at Egbema, Omoku and Gbaran
had assured him that the projects would be completed by August, in order
to serve Nigerians better.

The NDPHC boss also argued that going by the level of work being done
by his company, more projects would be commissioned in Lagos and other
parts of Nigeria.

“As you can see, we have commissioned five projects. This one in
Isolo is the biggest of all the projects in Lagos generally. If we leave
here, if the way is clement, we will still be commissioning one or two
projects. We will be commissioning some more projects.

“We will be going to the biggest injection transmission sub-station
in Nigeria, at Oke Aro, a few kilometers from Lagos. It has 2×300 and
2×60 MVA transformers in that location. That is very big indeed. And it
is the first one in Nigeria.

“It was done by NDPHC and it is in line with Mr. President’s
transformation agenda. We hope that when we leave Lagos, we go to
Kaduna, because we have about four projects ready for commissioning. In
Kano, we have another four projects for commissioning. Then we will go
back to the East. Two weeks ago, we were in the East, where we
commissioned seven projects. Every month, it is going to be a harvest.”

Speaking on the advertised NIPP projects, Olotu said about 44
companies showed interest, but certain processes had to be done before
the final bids were concluded. One of the processes include a road show
that would commence in May, which would take NDPHC to major business
cities of the world such as London, New York, Hong Kong, New Delhi and
Lagos.

“We are going for a road show sometime in May. We are going to major
business cities of the world, London, New York, Hong Kong, New Delhi,
and of course, Lagos, which is our flagship business centre in Nigeria.
We will invite both the international and local communities to show
interest in these projects.

“The basic reason is that government does not want to run these power
plants or any of its infrastructures. Government has no business in
doing business. The money expended on them so far is huge. Government
wants the private sector to bring in their best practices to play in
order to ensure that not only the way we deliver power sustainably, but
that the delivery will also be qualitative and that Nigerians will have
value for these investments for a long period of time.

“Apart from that, all these power plants are open to expansion. It is
the private sector with their fund that can assist the government to
expand these power plants and give us more megawatts as the years go
by,” Olotu said.